Sister Fish

My sister, Susannah, was skilled in the kitchen long before I realized that I loved to cook. While I was traipsing around the backyard choreographing dance routines for an audience of stuffed animals, Susannah, age 10, was perfecting tomato quiche, a dish I pretended to be bored of as a matter of jealous principle. We each took our roundabout ways to get back to the kitchen and now, Susannah owns her own cafe, Bread & Circuses, in Barcelona, turning the Catalonian crowd onto the virtues of the American sandwich.

On the rare occasion that Susannah and I find ourselves in the same country and in the same kitchen, true to Taylor-family form, we spend breakfast talking about what to eat for lunch and spend lunch discussing what we'll have for dinner. Cooking together has become part stage, and part classroom for each of us, an opportunity to show off but also to see what dishes the other has come to love. Our palettes were trained on the same food for much of our lives, but our takes are different--let's just say I tend more towards "buckwheat" and she towards "butter". From time to time, each of us produces a dish that could just have easily sprung from the other's brain.

A few weeks ago Sus did just that with this incredibly simple fish dish. It combines many of my favorite flavors in a single roasting pan--lemon, olives, fennel, peppers-- and it only takes about 15 minutes to cook. For those of you who are intimidated by cooking fish, which can seem complicated, this is a great way to test the waters. This time I can't feign boredom and must give credit where credit is due. Sister fish is delicious.

Sister Fish

feeds 4

One 1.5 pound very fresh cod filet (or four small filets)

1/2 bulb of fennel

1/2 a red onion

4 cloves garlic

1 small red or orange bell pepper

1/2 a cup good green olives

1 lemon

olive oil

salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Using a mandoline or a very sharp knife, carefully juilenne the fennel, peppers and onion. Place them in the bottom of a roasting pan.

Add the peeled garlic cloves and olives to the pan along with a glug of olive oil and some salt and pepper. Toss the vegetables well until they are somewhat evenly mixed and coated, and make a thick layer in the bottom of the pan.

Again, using the mandoline or a knife, slice enough paper-thin rounds of lemon to form a single layer over the vegetables.

Place the fish filet(s) in a single layer on top of the lemons. Drizzle with a bit more olive oil. Salt and pepper the fish, place in the oven and cook for about 15 minutes, until the fish is just cooked through. It should flake easily away when prodded with a fork but should still be moist. The vegetables should be soft and starting to let their juices into the bottom of the pan. 

Using a metal spatula, divide the filet into four even pieces. Distribute the vegetables evenly among the four plates and top each with a piece of fish. Add a bit more salt and pepper to taste and serve with a wedge of fresh lemon.

Heritage Food: Smoked Salmon Sandwiches with Dill Butter and Marinated Turnips

I think you might be way more into salmon than I am. So my sweetheart told me as I suggested for the third time that week that perhaps we should have salmon for dinner. I admit, I love the fish. I chalk it up to my Norwegian roots, and I like it in almost any form. Salmon sashimi is one of my all time favorite foods. The fatty fish at its best when raw is rich and silky and practically needs no chewing. I like salmon out of the can in place of tuna salad or added last minute to pasta with peas and herbs. It is equally delicious seared, poached or grilled, and perhaps best of all, smoked.

I've loved salmon since childhood, and though it wasn't exactly a staple food in our house it was something we ate each year at certain times--smoked salmon on Christmas Eve and Day at my grandparents' house, and poached salmon in the summer after my parents had fished them from the Upsalquitch River on their annual visit to a friend's cabin in Canada. They would come home with the beautiful fish stacked in a cooler, their scales still luminous, bellies sliced to show the clean flesh inside of a pink hue so deep it bordered on red. As my Norwegian grandmother wrote in her memoir/cookbook, "Until you have eaten a fine, firm, freshly-caught salmon like this, poached and served with a little melted butter poured over it, and plenty of chopped parsley or dill (that ubiquitous herb so appreciated in Scandinavia), you have missed one of the great gastronomical treats of the world: top quality, fresh-as-possible food, simply but perfectly prepared."

Salmon is pretty easy to find these days making it an option to eat in any season, but not all fish are created equal. Farmed salmon (one response to overfishing of the wild variety) has become ubiquitous but doesn't appeal to me at all. It lacks flavor, has more fat, is colored an odd orange-ish with dyes, and is often full of hormones and antibiotics. Even sustainably farmed salmon doesn't seem right. It is somehow too removed from that beautiful beast of a fish I used to see each summer, a seasonal meal we looked forward too each July, a meal eaten with relish and satisfaction because some primal desire to seek a source of food in the wild, kill it, clean it and feed it to your family had been met. They were healthy fish and we were healthier for eating them. That wan hunk of flesh sitting on ornamental kale behind a glass counter just doesn't seem the same, energetically speaking.

Still, at times, the Scandinavian blood in me starts calling for salmon and I have to heed its cry. I had such a craving in the middle of our recent heat wave. With each day soaring into triple digit temperatures I had little desire to turn on even one burner of the stove. I bought a few slices of wild smoked salmon from the fish counter, some dark rye bread and a big bunch of dill. I chopped the dill into good salted butter and slathered a thick layer of it onto the bread.

The fish was wild caught, never frozen, smoked in Santa Barbara, and of that same dark hue as the fish from my childhood. I topped it all with thinly sliced baby turnips from the garden, marinated lightly in rice wine vinegar and olive oil, and a big squeeze of lemon. I dined on the cool tile floor with my back pressed against the sliding glass door to the garden. A while later, sated, I looked at my empty plate and without thinking said aloud Takk for maten, which in Norwegian means Thanks for dinner. Sometimes there is just no fighting your roots.

Smoked Salmon Sandwiches with Dill Butter and Turnips

serves 2

2 pieces of dense rye bread, ideally sprouted

4oz wild caught smoked salmon

2-4 T good salted butter, at room temperature

2-4 T dill, finely chopped 

2 small turnips or one large one

2 T rice wine or champagne vinegar

2 T high quality olive oil

1/2 a lemon cut in two wedges

flaky sea salt

In a small bowl stir together the butter and dill until well combined. Set aside. (You could use an entire stick of butter and as much dill as you like and save any unused in the fridge for later use in vegetable dishes or melted on top of fish or a steak or anything else you like to eat with butter and herbs.)

Using a mandoline or a very sharp paring knife, slice the turnip into paper thin petals. In a small bowl whisk together the vinegar and olive oil. Add the turnips and stir until well combined. Let sit at least 15 minutes. The turnips can sit in the liquid for up to 2 hours before use.

Slather each piece of bread with a thick layer of dill butter. Be sure to go edge to edge. Leave no centimeter of bread uncovered. Trust me.

Place a couple of pieces of salmon over the butter on each piece of bread, again try to cover the bread from head to toe, edge to edge. Cover the salmon with a single layer of turnip slices. Squeeze lemon over each sandwich and sprinkle with flakey sea salt. 

I ate mine with an iteration of Maggie's Salad. For a heartier meal, add some steamed or roasted new potatoes with more dill butter melted over them.

Potage Santé aka Green Soup

When you are used to cooking for two and are suddenly left to your own devices, funny things start to happen. Namely, your meals suffer. I inherited from my mother the proclivity to--when left to eat alone--combine leftovers of different and discordant flavors in the same bowl, at odd times of the day or night, and to eat them while doing a crossword puzzle. It's not a lack of interest in the preparation, or in the flavor of the food, but rather a tendency to fall into a time warp of concentration and work from which we suddenly awaken, and, ravenous, go for ease of access and the simple need to fuel. The crossword puzzle is a way to somewhat absentmindedly reboot the brain. It's that or solitaire. So while my sweetheart is scaling cliffs in Yosemite I have found myself, at 5pm or late at night, eating a "dinner" comprised of things in my fridge that can only be summed up by calling them "orts." Yup. It's been that good.

Yesterday we had the first rainy day in Sonoma in months. The sky was a smudge against the bleached hills, and while it never poured, a steady drizzle made it just cold enough to let it settle in the bones. In that damp afternoon, I went to the garden, picked a bunch of kale and uncovered startlingly red potatoes, gleaming like garnets in the black loam.

I was going to cook. I would not eat popcorn and pieces of turkey rolled around mustard and slices of avocado then dipped in hummus. I was going to prepare a delicious, nourishing meal and eat it at dinner time. I was going to make green soup.

Green soup is something my dad makes, and it is something his mother made. She called it Potage Santé, which means Health Soup. Hers always included sorrel, which is a delicious, lemony weed that grows wild and is a great detoxifier and general tonic. It's hard to find in groceries stores or markets so dad and I have both adapted the recipe, using whatever greens we can get. This is a soup for all seasons though I associate it with inclement weather: a rainy summer night, blizzards, sunless spring days and the first frosts of autumn. Each green soup is slightly different from the last--depending on the season, the mood, the vegetables at hand--but it is always green, always with the backbone of some kind of allium and a potato to thicken, and best accompanied by crusty bread warmed in the oven, and a couple of good cheeses.

Our sorrel hasn't emerged yet so I used kale from the garden, some cauliflower that needed a home, and, just to make it extra green, the last of a bag of frozen peas. I had no onion but young garlic worked just as well.

While this soup is a great home for the ends of vegetables it is also one which is vastly improved by the quality of the ingredients you put into it. It's a great neutral pallet for any array of herbs and spices but if your vegetables have come straight out of healthy ground or fresh from a farmer's market, you won't need more than salt and pepper.

The soup took me about an hour and a half to prep, cook, puree and reheat. At 7pm I closed my computer, poured a glass of wine, turned on some music, and sat down to a real meal by myself. It truly was health soup. Never underestimate the joy of cooking for one.

Green Soup

serves 4-6

4-5 cups chicken or vegetable stock or water

1 medium sized leek, sliced & washed

about 2 cups chopped celery and/or carrots

12-16 oz potatoes, peeled and cubed

4 cups dark leafy greens of choice, roughly chopped

2 T olive oil

1 T unsalted butter

salt and pepper to taste

optional add-ins
fresh or frozen peas
dandelion greens
spinach
collard greens or swiss chard
broccoli or cauliflower

sour cream, heavy cream or plain yogurt to top
chopped fresh herbs to top
red pepper flakes to top
edible flowers to top

In a large, heavy-bottomed pot, heat the olive oil and melt the butter over medium-high heat. Add the leek and sauté, stirring, for about one minute. Reduce heat to medium and add the celery and carrots. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are soft and the leek is translucent. 

Add the potatoes (and broccoli if you are using it), stir, and then pour in the stock. The liquid should cover the vegetables. If it doesn't, add more stock or water to cover. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer, cooking until a fork goes easily through the potatoes. About 10-15 minutes. When the potatoes are cooked but not too soft, stir in the greens. You may need to add a bit more liquid at this point. Once the greens are wilted, remove the pot from heat and let cool about 10 minutes.

Working in batches, ladle the soup into a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Pour the pureed soup into a bowl. If you are serving right away, pour the pureed soup back into the pot and heat at medium-low heat. Taste and adjust salt and pepper as needed. You may want to thin the soup with more stock or water at this point as well. If you plan to eat the soup later, let it cool after pureeing and then store in the refrigerator until ready to eat.

When the soup is hot, ladle into bowls and top however you choose. This time I used wild mustard flowers from the bed in front of our house. Crusty bread for dredging the empty bowl is highly recommended.